Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment. Not worth reading.
Review: Only through a newspaper interview with Norman Mailer, could I understand the purpose of the book and appreciate the research and work that went into it. The book itself is less than enlightening, and less than literature. I had the feeling that Mailer, during these Christian times, had either to avoid saying anything controversial, interesting or challenging - or he had overestimated the value of the intellectual and spiritual ideas which he had hoped to share with his readers. The only interesting element in the work is that he used the first person voice to represent the largest of all historic figures. The Christ as portrayed by Mailer could never have gotten out of his own times. Mailer would do well to stick to the world he knows which certainly offers him enough ideas for his writing talents. Frankly, this book is not worth reading - even taken as a small entertainment, the reader will feel he could have spent his time better elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: He himself must have been inspired.
Review: Norman Mailer must have been inspired to write these lines. He draws on common words and turns the difficult to grasp abstract of faith into an uncommonly clear theme, while pulling us closer to God. No other author, aside from Matthew and his account of the events, has stirred me to rethink my own place and purpose in the world. I can't help but be impressed by Mailer's own faith to contemplate the possibilities about life and death that Christ himself could have. I hope to find the author treat these themes so well in future works.
Rating: 
Summary: There are much better things to read
Review: Surprisingly, Mailer adds to an already long list of conventional Christian novelizations (inflations) of the gospels, all of which are unnecessary if you've read the originals by the first-century authors. For something different, get your hands on the Nag Hamadi Library and read the gospels of Thomas, Phillip, and Mary. And the apocryphal gospels are a hoot; especially the nativity gospels of James and psuedo-Thomas (where a midwife learns the hard way to keep her hands away from Mary's private parts). The Jesus novels by D.H. Lawrence, Robert Graves, Nikos Kazantzakis, and Gore Vidal are all more imaginative, daring, intelligent, and illuminating than Mailer's. For good non-fiction reads, try E.P. Sanders, John Dominic Crossan, and Geza Vermes.
Rating: 
Summary: Same Old Stuff
Review: There is little which is new or interesting in this book. Mailer has attempted to write a autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth. Ultimately, he write just another version of those 19th Century lives of Jesus in the first person. If you want to read a really good, modern life of Jesus, by suggestion is the Last Temptation of Christ.
Rating:
Summary: Why'd he bother?
Review: It is hard to find any compelling reason for Mailer to have written this book. There is little that is imaginative or new in this telling of the Jesus myth. Reading this, one would believe that scholars have discovered nothing about the life of Jesus since the gospels were written. Mailer's Jesus does nothing more than parrot the words put in his mouth by the gospel writers. Why not create a Jesus that would have been a product of his times, not one who is 20th century creation? Such a creation would have been worthy of Mailer's considerable talent. This "Gospel" can safely be ignored.
Rating:
Summary: No knock-out punch for the man who would be Hemmingway.
Review: Mailer falls short; but thank heaven the book is far shorter than his dismal "Harlot's Ghost". The author's ego -- battling "The Old Man & The Sea" for short novel, and "Last Temptation" for literary significance (both Nobel efforts) -- work's at humility in the first person and in doing so fails as a writer. The writing is as weak as any in terms of basic expository rules; at times it is smug, which is 180-degrees from humble. No American author has neglected his responsibility to literature more than Mailer. Fictionalized Journalism does not a Nobel Prize earn. The fiction here is totally lacking; as are active verbs, visual descriptions, writing as showing rather than telling. It's as though Mailer read the New Testament and then summarized it to a cronie over a few drinks at the bar, wet-minded enough to use the first person.
A Passionist's prayers at the fourteen stations would be more revealing and uplifting and honest.
Rating:
Summary: "only a born-again Christian will understand this book"
Review: I say this because a "faith" believer can understand his Jesus and his reactions and thoughts as Mailer outlined them in his dialogue as he saw it. I too, have the same thoughts of the world and the people like Judas,Peter,Matthew, etc. Human nature never changes and that is what Mr. Mailer capitalized on. If you receive the "Faith" in your heart, you will understand Jesus and his life except he went one step further than we do, he actually lived the life of poverty and actually had the "Faith" etc. His "Faith" of course was stronger than ours, as only one Jesus was needed for us to follow. Therefore, to gain insight into a world of a believer, I recommend that you read this and if you do not understand, read again
Rating:
Summary: A triumph: a trinity of courage, compassion & poetic genius
Review: "Only a novelist as daring as Mailer would attempt to retell the story of Jesus in Jesus's own words. . . . Its penetration into Jesus's human heart rivals Dostoyevsky for depth and insight. Its re-creation of the world through which Jesus walked is as real as blood. Ultimately, Mailer convinces, more than any writer before him, that for Jesus the man it could have been just like this; and that is, in itself, some sort of literary miracle". Publishers Weekly
(Quoted from the back cover of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, paperback) I cannot think of a more perfect book to read and give as gifts for the Holidays, to people of all faiths OR lack thereof. I have heard for years that Norman Mailer's ego, with its supposedly massive size, has this way of getting in the way of his message and transcendant literary skill in everything he writes; as if there is a watermark of his opinion of himself printed on every one of his sentences that becomes visible when you hold them up to the light of day. Though that isn't my excuse for not reading any of his work before this, I can only imagine how much jealousy lay in the hearts of those who proclaim this as a caveat whenever his work hits the market and touches the surface of the universal human heart after reading THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON. Far from attempting to completely de-spiritualize or Freudian-ize Jesus into spiritual insignificance, Norman Mailer attempts--and for me is successful--at something far more creative, courageous and important. Mailer, with THE GOSPEL... allows for new spiritual and compassionate eyes to see the Christ, via giving the documents describing the life and Tao of Jesus in the New Testament a completely different context and perspective. He reveals the hidden dynamic of the unconscious deification of the writers of the synoptic gospels--and their writings--that not only runs centuries deep, back into the early stages of the Catholic Church, but perhaps is the genesis of the environment which necessitated the appearance of the Son of Man and his revolutionary message among the Hebrews in Jerusalem in the first place--centuries before he came. And then Mailer returns THEM, not Jesus, back into the very human, epic poet/journalist-symbols of the Ancient Near East Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul originally were; making an unconscious debate over THEIR message (as opposed to Jesus') masquerading as love of Christ, intellectual sophistication or piety--yea or nea--irrelevant. All by trying to tell Jesus's story in something of his own words. Nietzsche has said in HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN that it is the degree to which one can display a most positive vision or illusion of ONESELF that decides and structures both the opinion we have of people, places and things in the world and the way in which we express it: the Narcissistic impulse of man's ego. Mailer's courage is in revealing this truism's agonizing power, as it may have infused the very religion to which much of Western Civilization has turned to rise above such ego-burdened ways. But his talent shows itself in how this work is nearly devoid of lambast or criticism of those caught in such paradims over the millenia and today, as it enters the loving, complex, but forgiving heart of his subject--the subject of it all. He does this by making us hear Christ; not from the point of view of people who wrote about him many decades after his death/ascenscion, but from an artistic one, a representation of the voice of Christ himself. An artistic representation so compassionate as to, in some passages, incomparably touch the heart and reawaken the soul. The courage to attempt this would be in and of itself--even in the context of hubris--worth congratulating regardless of success. The compassion to lift oneself beyond judgement and culturally acceptable evaluation and go straight to the heart of such a profound subject, and then write a new yet familiarly compassionate view of the man/spirit, would also be laudable even if it failed to move you. And the erudition necessary to make ancient Jerusalem, Rome, Cairo, Bethlehem and Gallilee come alive alone would make it an enjoyable read, even if the subject and purpose of it all was lost and missed. Norman Mailer didn't just combine all three of these essential gifts and distill out most of the possible downsides associated with them with THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON. I counted only about four or five times in all 200-odd pages of the book (totalling maybe ten or fifteen lines of text) where the presence of a 20th century man with his own opinions about life, religion and his own significance bled through the gentle, non-sentimental, purely magnificent poetic prose. Norman's personal trinity of courage, compassion and erudition created this vehicle, via which he let his spirit/muse and it's Gabriel-like message for us rise above the confines of his ego. (And, again, as I've never met him, that ego may still be being overexaggerated by those in a culture that, unlike the eyes of the Christ, cannot see the many ironic forms of it's own arrogance.) As such, this book--if only for a moment (smile)-- can have you doing the same for the Holidays. I rate this so close to five stars that I might as well call it that: a five star beautiful achievement. A masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Silence Is Golden
Review: This book is respectful of the silence and space found in the gospels. It is a fine novel- intentionally simple w/out being simplistic. I found it more meditative than dull, but then again I like dull things.
Rating:
Summary: Dull
Review: I just finished this book. The reading was easy enough and I kept with it because I was hoping it would get better. The one word I have for the book, however, is *dull*.
When I first read the cover for this book, I thought, "Well, this should give a new slant to the gospel, a shift in perspective to the story of Jesus." I was sorely disappointed.
Mailer seems to have simply pulled out much of the sayings from the traditional gospels and changed up some of their chronology and shifted the narration into first person. Otherwise, not much is different. His Jesus seems as distant from his own story as any of the New Testament writers who recounted what had been passed down to them.
There seems very little passion in this protagonist. Ironic isn't it? Mailer's Messiah does not have the charisma to gather the following of crowds, much less interested readers.
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